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Pheasant shooting season in full swing

We used to live in Wellington - a city built on a fault line, the land twisted by countless earthquakes that have and continue to shake the area as pressure that builds up from colliding Pacific and Australian Plates is released. Running up Wade Street with Rata on a lead - not the native New Zealand tree, but a friend's black lab - my companion spied two other dogs at the top of the hill. Rata tended to pull on her lead, especially at the start of a walk or run, as was the case here, but this was a new level of canine assisted running. I always used to time that initial hill section up to the Wadestown road, and that time was a record time; a time that i never managed to improve on. Today I got a new course record on my Dumgoyne loop for a different reason. A sign at the second gate beyond Cantywheery announced that the area beyond was closed for shooting. Perhaps I should have turned back. But I carried on pondering my options and simultaneously wondering if like many of those road signs that announce roadworks that have either yet to start or have been completed, the sign was premature or out of date, or was it like the nearby sign that prohibits cyclists, just overly restrictive. As I concluded I can't take the risk and would veer left down to the road and run along that instead, and then started to wonder if that left turn was also within the shoot area, a shot rang out. The sign was was clearly timely. A tweed-clad man with a rifle assured me that all shooters would be on my left and that i should be safe on the track, but as I continued the adrenaline released in response to the gunshot, and the presence of people with guns definitely upped my average speed, which might have been even faster if it wasn't curbed by a paranoid fear that I didn't want to appear too like a startled deer. Pheasant shooting season in Scotland, Wales and England lasts from October 1st to February 1st so there is plenty of opportunity for fear induced speed augmentation.


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